The Supreme Court upheld the law against the promotion of illegal immigration
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The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the law by Helaman Hansen, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for collecting up to $10,000 dollars in a fraud related to an alleged path to citizenship.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that criminalizes encouraging or inducing illegal immigration, saying the rule does not unconstitutionally infringe free speech rights.
Federal law allows people who promote illegal immigration to be prosecuted, and the United States High Court ruled in the case of Helaman Hansen, a Californian who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for offering fraudulent adoptions to immigrants, as a path to obtain United States citizenship.
The court ruled in a 7-2 vote in favor of the Biden administration to uphold the conviction of defendant Helaman Hansen for breaking the law.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said in the opinion of the Supreme Court, writing by a majority of the justices who voted in favor, that the provision in question “prohibits only the intentional solicitation or facilitation of certain illegal acts”, not including protected speech . As such, the law is not so broad as to be unconstitutional, Barrett wrote.
Hansen, who was seeking a reduced sentence, argued in his lawsuit that that rule, which makes it a felony to encourage an alien to come or reside in the United States knowing that it is against the law,
Hansen was sentenced to 20 years in prison for deceiving hundreds of immigrants between 2012 and 2016 into believing that he could guarantee a path to citizenship for through adult adoption and thus encourage them to stay in the United States.
The man appealed part of his sentence (10 years) and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled in his favor, determining that the rule was “quite broad.”.
In this regard, Esha Bhandari, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement that the Supreme Court decision has “drastically” limited the rule and “we now expect the government to respect the rights of free speech and only limited law enforcement going forward,” according to the News.
Hansen collected nearly $1.8 million by defrauding more than 470 foreigners out of they paid between $550 and $10,000 each, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment.
Friday's ruling was one of two Supreme Court rulings unsealed on immigration-related issues, won by the Biden administration.
In the other ruling, the court upheld the Biden administration's immigration priorities to detain and deport immigrants.